Let’s Be Kids Again

By TMP 44th Editorial Board

Think back to your favorite thing to do when you were eight. When was the last time you remember loving it as much as you did then? Milton students often live under constant stress, triggered by rigorous schedules: classes from 8:05 am to 3:20 pm, then sports or other commitments right after school, then homework for hours, and the list goes on. Within this race for achievement, we often lose interests that we used to hold dear; this academic setting transforms our once-loved hobbies and interests into competitive and often joyless pursuits. However, we urge you to break out of this mindset while you still can. While pursuing our passions for school may seem to inevitably deprive us of our former curiosity, our best work will nearly always spring from joy. Choosing to seek out our childlike love for our hobbies, activities, and academic interests may help us to lead better and more fulfilled lives.

Relentless academic demands and extracurricular pressures dilute the passion we once felt for our childhood hobbies. Younger children are able to enjoy simple pursuits without feeling that everything must be a pathway towards excellence; during childhood, activities can simply be fun. However, when these hobbies become intertwined with school and college applications, the joy we derive from pursuing them diminishes. Writing becomes a labor of articulating a claim and supporting it with interpretive sentences, often seeking high grades or competition prizes. Reading transforms from a recreational pleasure into a way to prepare for class discussions and to establish ourselves as educated. The same is true for athletics: where soccer, for example, once meant fun with friends, the drive toward collegiate athletics pushes us to optimize even our recreational games for performance statistics. Playing a sport has been conflated with pursuing it; the years we pour into each hobby are compressed into a description for our resume.

Our hobbies, however, must remain just that: hobbies. Without finding joy in the work that we do and continuing to pursue the activities that make us happiest, we are likely to lead less fulfilling lives regardless of our career success. Of course, in an ideal scenario, we would all love to end up in a job or industry that we enjoy working in, but few are fortunate enough to reach this luxury. In fact, many people do not enjoy their jobs, so we must retain our hobbies as a break from the working day. Even those of us who do end up with our dream careers, though, risk burnout from the single-minded pursuit of those particular interests. Thus, regardless of our future careers, we cannot allow ourselves to lose our hobbies to the constant grind of the Milton experience; instead, our ability to continue to enjoy our lives beyond our work, to experience curiosity and excitement, will allow us to sustain happiness and likely even produce better results. The pursuit of our hobbies is, after all, a way to maintain the everyday pleasures of our lives when we no longer strive to optimize for the next destination.

So, go read a book just to jump into a new imaginary world or learn about a topic that has always interested you, not because your English teacher assigned it. Go on a run, not to get faster, but just to enjoy the fresh air. Pull out a pen and journal and write your own thoughts without  trying to meet some standard of proficiency. Go build something out of cardboard, out of Legos, out of whatever you built castles or arcade games from when you were seven. Pick up your instrument and learn a new song. Do what you used to love, or do something you’ve learned to love now, but never forget how to be curious.

Source: Adobe Stock (via Instagram @the.milton.paper)